Doctor Who Unbound - Drinking Partners
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Shortly after becoming a DC, Rachel Bailey encounters a woman binge drinking. A woman who calls herself The Doctor, or Susan Foreman. (Exile universe)


Disclaimer - I own neither 'Scott and Bailey' or Doctor Who.

The Doctor in this is the parallel version from the Big Finish audio drama 'Exile,' where the Doctor had managed to escape the Time Lords after the events from The War Games, and regenerated to try to go undercover. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

Enjoy!

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Drinking Partners.

Rachel Bailey laughed at a particularly filthy joke one of her friends had just uttered, and she almost choked down on the large gulp of wine she'd just taken from her wine glass before she managed to get hold of her self before the fruity liquid went down the wrong tube. She had every reason to celebrate; after spending years in uniform she was now a detective, a Detective Constable.

Detective Constable Rachel Bailey, even in her almost inebriated state Rachel felt that the title had a nice ring to it, although not as nice as Detective Inspector, or even Detective Chief Inspector Rachel Bailey.

Eventually, Rachel left her pals and went to the bar to get herself another drink. When she got there she gave her order to the barman. "A bottle of wine please," she said, her words slurring a bit.

The barman looked at her and shook his head, but he took a good look at her with a professional eye and saw that she wasn't as drunk as she sounded. He gave her a bottle and held out his hand for payment. Rachel looked at it in confusion for a moment and then she realised what the man wanted, and with a sigh, she placed the bottle on the counter and reached into her pocket for some cash. It took her a while to find the right change, her mind was all over the place and the booze was making her brain woozy, but she found it and gave it to the patient barman who was more than used to this type of behaviour.

Rachel was about to take the bottle of wine back to her mates and get even more pissed than they were right now when she heard someone speak to the right of her.

"That's a lot of wine for one woman," the person, who Rachel realised was a woman herself, commented.

Rachel turned and found herself looking at a woman who appeared to be physically older than herself by a decade or two, slightly overweight with long brown hair that hung down to the shoulders, wearing a red velvet jacket over a knitted black and white waistcoat.

"Maybe, but what's it to you?" Rachel asked in a confrontation manner which often went hand in hand with the rest of her personality; as a female copper she had learnt to be as tough as the men, even more tougher, and sometimes it had the unfortunate side effect of getting into her personal life where people she met and didn't even know ended up on the wrong side of her temperament.

She didn't mean to be rude or confrontational to this woman who had just made a harmless observation, but in her near-drunken state, she couldn't help herself.

The woman didn't seem bothered by the question. In fact, she looked as pissed as Rachel herself felt, only she was somehow able to look soberer than Rachel could and for a moment the young DC felt envious of this woman's ability to push the effects of the mind-numbing sensation of alcohol reducing the brain to mush.

"Nothing," the woman said, holding up a bottle of wine that was right next to her. Rachel had to focus through her bleary eyes to focus on the sight of the bottle, and to her surprise, the level of wine was almost down to the bottom, and right in front of Rachel, this strange woman took a deep swig straight from the bottle without pouring a drop into a glass.

Rachel watched dumbfounded and open-mouthed as she watched the woman drink more of the wine in a single gulp before she placed the bottle back on the counter top. The woman belched and Rachel could smell the stench of booze, but otherwise, the woman didn't look that drunk though she did blink her eyes once or twice as though she was relying on some inner strength to block off the effects of the wine.

Rachel opened up the bottle of wine and poured herself some of the red sweet tasting drink and she knocked some of it back in a kind of childish imitation of the woman - she wasn't worried about her friends, most of them were by now so pissed that if she did return to them with the bottle and it was half emptied then it wouldn't make any difference because they wouldn't really look when she did get back to him - but as she replaced the glass on the counter she found the woman looking at her with an expression that Rachel, even in her half pissed state, took to be amusement.

"You certainly looked as though you were enjoying that," the woman commented with an amused smile.

Rachel shrugged, grinning since it was true. "Yeah, it was," she said before she remembered some semblance of her manners. "I'm Rachel, Rachel Bailey," she introduced herself, holding out her hand. The woman took it and shook almost too enthusiastically as though she had not seen anyone become friendly with for a long time.

The woman gave her a bright smile. "Rachel Bailey," she repeated, speaking Rachel's name slowly as if seeing how that rolled off the tongue, but then she quickly smiled. "Nice to meet you, Rachel, I'm the Doctor."

Rachel crinkled her eyes. The loud music was thudding so loudly her alcohol affected brain ached, but she could hear the woman. "Doctor who?" she sent back.

"Hmm?" the woman replied before she realised what Rachel was saying as though she too were having problems with hearing what Rachel was saying. "Oh, most people just call me the Doctor, though my name…. my name is Susan Foreman."

"Oh, well nice to meet yer, Susan," Rachel returned, not really focusing that much on the woman's name though had she been fully sober like she was whenever she was on duty, then she might ask a few more questions though not right now. "What're you a doctor of?" she asked, her head spinning form the booze.

"Practically everything," the Doctor replied with a small smile, though it looked like it was tinged with something Rachel couldn't work out. Suddenly the Doctor looked regretful, and she picked up the wine bottle she'd just swigged from and stared at the contents of the bottle with an expression Rachel just wasn't in the right frame of mind to really decipher, though if she had been sober then she would have guessed the other woman was depressed for some other reason, though what the strange woman said next took her mind off of the Doctor's expression. "But I don't feel like a Doctor anymore."

"What do you mean?" Rachel asked.

The Doctor sighed. "So much has happened… I had two friends, and now they're gone. I used to travel around, and now I can't."

Rachel was taken aback not just by the sadness in the woman sitting next to her but by the way, her voice seemed to rise to a hysterical shout. "What happened?" she asked curiously, asking her question just loud enough to be heard by the woman; it was just lucky they were in a nightclub where everything was so loud no-one would really pay much attention to a woman shouting.

The Doctor seemed to remember where she was, and she looked around quickly but the young DC was too out of it to notice the Doctor's sudden shift of mood, but had she been as aware as she usually was as a copper she would almost say the Doctor was a hunted fugitive…

But as quickly as the sudden shift of mood came on so too did the Doctor's realisation that she needed to be calm. "Oh, nothing," she smiled. "They returned to their own lives. Anyway," the strange woman said, grinning still, "what do you do Rachel?"

"I'm a police officer," Rachel replied openly, though a part of her which was still sober was wondering why she was being so open without being the same bolshy person she usually was; she only acted that way as a means of self-protection when she was on the Job, but whenever she was drunk she was a lot more open, but she had noticed once or twice some people would back away even while pissed when they heard what she did.

The Doctor looked startled for a second, but something seemed to enter her brain because she relaxed. "A police officer?" she repeated. "Sounds interesting. Have you been one for long?"

"I'm a D-detective Constable," Rachel replied, choking for a moment on the swig she'd taken from the wine bottle. "Joined up a few years ago, waited 'til I got a bit of experience, then I did my exams, now I'm a DC."

"Sounds impressive," the Doctor smiled at her genuinely, and Rachel smiled back.

"What 'bout you, Doctor, what are you doing now?"

The Doctors smile faded slightly. "I'm not sure, just….wandering about the country now, trying to find somewhere to live, and find something meaningful to do….," she said before she trailed off, her body language making it clear even to Rachel's half drunken state she was not going to speak any more about the topic.

In the end, the two women began laughing and drinking, cracking jokes, before Rachel tugged the Doctor over to her mates. None of them so much as questioned the Doctor when she was brought over, some of them were already on the point of dropping like flies anyway. They were all that drunk.

It didn't matter all that much though since the Doctor and Rachel's friends drank and laughed themselves to death.

Finally, when they went on their way out, laughing and giggling insanely, they quickly forgot the events of the night before, and the Doctor was never seen again, and none of them could remember enough about the woman to really enquire about where she was now.

In the years that passed, Rachel would soon forget about the Doctor as she dedicated herself to her career through the Sex Crimes Unit, her time as a DC in Gill Murray's team, all the way through the nightmares with Nick Savage, her brother, Sean, and Gill's retirement, but the Time Lady would never forget her.


End file.
